


Gloves.

by ToxicPineapple



Series: Rantaro Amami Week 2k19 [1]
Category: New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Autumn, Gen, Introspection, Money, New York City, Non-Despair AU, Pre-Hope's Peak Academy, Rantaro Amami Week, Rantaro is a filthy rich boy, Referenced sick character, References to Poverty, introspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-27
Updated: 2019-09-27
Packaged: 2020-10-29 09:44:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20794610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ToxicPineapple/pseuds/ToxicPineapple
Summary: Central Park is beautiful. New York City is very urban- though nothing he’s unused to, being that his family is from Tokyo- but while the park itself still radiates that same city energy, it’s packed with trees, and since it’s nearing the end of September the leaves in all the tall deciduous trees that droop above him have begun to turn from green to an array of oranges, yellows, and reds. They haven’t quite begun to fall yet, but the green grass underneath his feet is still soft. Albeit wet and cold and slippery, as it’s so cold out that the morning dew has frozen.---Rantaro muses about the season of autumn, and talks to a stranger.---Amami week day one: Autumn/Wealth





	Gloves.

**Author's Note:**

> here's my first writing for the Amami week I'm hosting in the days leading up to my boy's birthday :DDD
> 
> the prompt for today is Autumn/Wealth, and I chose to incorporate both, though I think I focused more on autumn as a prompt for this one.
> 
> if you want to do Amami week, which I'm doing as well as Storyflight, here are the prompts for this week:
> 
> Day one (Sept 27): Autumn/Wealth  
Day two (Sept 28): Sail/Bracelet  
Day three (Sept 29): Paint/Breeze  
Day four (Sept 30): Risk/Sunset  
Day five (Oct 01): Travel/Blame  
Day six (Oct 02): Vehicle/Found  
Day seven (Oct 03): Birthday/Smile

Rantaro covers his mouth with his hands, cups them into a dome shape, and leaves a small crack open between them before parting his lips and breathing out. The resulting puff of condensation that rises from between his hands is warm and satisfying; he smiles to himself as he watches it rise.

Even after getting a good amount of sleep last night, Rantaro’s still pretty jetlagged. That’s normal for him, though. He doesn’t fly in planes if he can avoid it. As much as it’s a mild inconvenience, because he doesn’t ever do his best work when he’s tired, he doesn’t mind it so much as one would expect.

He’s in New York City right now- more specifically in central park. It’s a frigid September morning, and the air outside is packed with moisture, which explains why he can see his breath. He hasn’t always known that, though. It always used to surprise him when he couldn’t see his breath on the cold and dry mornings. Rantaro doesn’t remember when he learned that the moisture in the air is the cause. Maybe he read it in a book somewhere. There’s not much he can do with the information, though. It might be good for trivia nights, but he doesn’t really do a lot of those. That would require being a part of a community, and Rantaro… isn’t.

Central Park is beautiful. New York City is  _ very  _ urban- though nothing he’s unused to, being that his family is from Tokyo- but while the park itself still radiates that same city energy, it’s packed with trees, and since it’s nearing the end of September the leaves in all the tall deciduous trees that droop above him have begun to turn from green to an array of oranges, yellows, and reds. They haven’t quite begun to fall yet, but the green grass underneath his feet is still soft. Albeit wet and cold and slippery, as it’s so cold out that the morning dew has frozen.

The reason he was breathing on his hands is because he was cold. He still is cold, actually, and he doesn’t have any gloves. Of course, the obvious solution to this would be to obtain gloves, but Rantaro is… easily distracted. He needs to weigh the pros and cons of going out of his way to buy a pair of gloves, because even though he packed everything else, he didn’t think to pack any gloves with him when he was preparing for his trip to NYC. (There were a lot of things to remember and Rantaro is only fifteen so he’s trying to cut himself some slack but it’s not easy sometimes being lenient with himself.)

On the one hand, if he went to buy gloves, he’d… have gloves. And that would be great. Because then his hands wouldn’t be cold anymore. On the other, though, he has fully functional pockets. Going out to buy gloves would be a waste of his time. He’s not here to go shopping! He’s here to find his sister!

His oldest sister, actually- ironically, the sister who got lost here is named Aki. He’s pretty sure he’d recognise her, even from afar, because her hair is pale blue and that’s not very common, even in NYC, but if he goes off to find gloves then he’ll be spending time that he  _ could  _ be spending looking for her looking for something that serves as a petty inconvenience at best. Yeah, his fingers are bright red and stiff from the cold, but he can just shove them into his pockets. He’s bound to need them eventually, but he can put that off for a surprisingly long time.

It’s decided, then. Rantaro won’t be buying gloves. To compensate, he pulls his sleeves over his hands and shoves them into the pockets of his jacket, wiggling his fingers around inside the two layers of fabric in an attempt to get his blood flowing more freely and to return the sensation to his fingertips.

Aki didn’t get lost in Central Park, but this is the second time he’s come to New York, excluding the time when Aki actually got lost, and he started here last time, so he figured he might as well. Besides, autumn is kind of his favourite season. Not that he likes having cold fingers or anything, but he usually has gloves when the air gets really chilly like this. (Rantaro kicks at the ground with one of his boots and then starts walking, figuring that if he’s going to sacrifice his comfort he’d better make today a productive day.) The air gets cooler but not so cold that he has to wear a thousand layers- which he does anyway but that is  _ so  _ not the point- and everything is always so colourful.

Colourful in a different way than spring, though Rantaro likes spring as well. It’s just that too many of his sisters have gotten lost during the spring time for him to truly enjoy the season. The heat kind of serves of a reminder of his failures nowadays. He prefers thinking about the temperature when it’s starting to cool down but not quite there yet. Besides, autumn has always had this fleeting, blink-and-you’ll-miss it kind of feeling. It’s not any shorter than the other seasons but it always feels that way.

He wonders why that is.

The association with Aki sure helps, too, though Aki’s favourite season was actually summer, not autumn, so it was pretty low on her list for the things that it represented. The end of summer, death, going back to work and all that. Rantaro wonders if, in the three years that Aki has been gone, that’s changed for her at all. If she’s come to appreciate the season that she was named for. The thought is poetic, and nice, but it also tastes bitter. Even if all of her experiences turn her into a wonderful kind of person who everyone wants to be around, they’ll be experiences that Rantaro… is not going to be by her side to witness.

And that’s what tastes bitter about it.

Aki is strong. She’ll be alright. But that doesn’t mean she deserves to be found any less.

Disregarding the cold, Rantaro pulls one of his hands from his pocket tugs down his sleeve, slipping his backpack off his shoulders and unzipping the small pocket in front. He has a whole photo album back at home but anticipating that he’d be going to New York he chose a couple pictures of Aki to show around looking for her. Of course, she’s bound to look different now, since it’s been three years since she was lost, but if anyone who he talks to has actually met her, then they’ll recognise her face. Right?

Rantaro pulls out the most recent picture he has, from right before they went to New York. Aki is smiling but holding up a hand, as though to block the camera. Her freckles stand out in the sun and she looks happy. Her twin, Kei, is holding her other hand. Her face is still visible, even though she appears to be trying to hide from the picture. She always was a bit annoyed by cameras. He has a couple candid shots of her too but he likes this one the best. She looks like she’s at peace.

In the photo, she’s eleven. She’s fourteen now, as of the twenty first. (That’s why they named her Aki, she was born on the equinox.) That is, if she’s alive.

Which of course she is, she’s out there, Rantaro isn’t going to think that way. He zips up his backpack and pulls it back over his shoulders, tucking the photograph into his palm. He’ll be in the area where Aki was lost soon, where he found Kei with her arm broken- at that point it’s just a matter of-

Someone collides with him, and on the icy concrete, Rantaro almost slips and falls on his back. He manages to catch himself, though, heels digging into the ground, and instinctively reaches out to steady the person who just bumped into him. A teen, maybe a year or two younger than Rantaro, it looks like. He’s got messy brown hair and green eyes- a different green than his own, more like an icy evergreen colour. Reminiscent of Christmas time. The kid looks startled, and his eyes are wide and scared, almost- gaze flickering between Rantaro’s face and the hand on his arm.

Rantaro, of course, gets the message, and drops his hand. “Sorry, I wasn’t thinking about where I was going,” he apologises in English, smiling slightly. He’s aware of his accent, of course, but the kid doesn’t seem to judge him for it. (Maybe calling the guy a kid isn’t the best choice of wording considering that there’s only about a year between them but it’s the best reference he has right now.) “You okay?”

“I-I’m fine,” the kid stutters out. “I’m just- uh…” he blinks, sniffling and wiping at his eyes with gloved hands. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t watching my way either. It’s fine.” His breath hitches and it occurs to Rantaro that the kid’s eyes have gone misty, like he’s about to cry.

“Hey, it’s okay, you don’t-” he flounders for words for a minute, briefly forgetting how to speak in English despite speaking the language fluently. “You don’t have to cry over it, it’s seriously not a big deal. If anything it’s  _ my  _ fault- I bump into people all the time, so it was probably my bad mojo that-”

“No, that’s- not why I’m…” laughing slightly, the kid shakes his head, pulling his hands away from his face. “Mojo?”

“Oh. Is that- not something that people commonly say over here?” Rantaro smiles sheepishly.

“It’s not like nobody says it,” the kid starts. “But it’s a weird thing to hear anyway.” After a moment, he shakes his head again. “I’m sorry. I really wasn’t crying over bumping into you, it’s… something else.”

It’s none of Rantaro’s business, of course, but the older brother in him screams out that the kid looks lost and sad and he’s already putting Aki’s picture into his pocket, momentarily forgotten as he speaks. “Everything okay? Sorry if I’m overstepping my bounds as a stranger, I just-” ah, might as well be a little bit honest. “-you’re about as old as one of my sisters, so seeing you upset kind of concerns me.”

The kid blinks at him. “You’re not  _ that  _ much older than me.”

“That’s fair.” Rantaro chuckles.

“But I’m- it’s just, y’know, the housing crisis, and all that.” Rantaro  _ doesn’t  _ know actually; he’s always had a stable place to live. There are homeless people in Japan, of course, but not nearly as many as there are in New York City. So maybe that’s what the kid is referring to. Upon further inspection, it doesn’t seem like this guy is particularly wealthy. He probably doesn’t live very well. It makes Rantaro feel a bit bad. “I’m just stressed about it, I mean, it’ll be fine, it’s just hard because I’m too young to work and my mom is sick so-” he stops. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said that part.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Rantaro says lightly, but he frowns anyway. “Is your mom alright?”

“Oh, well, she-” the kid pauses. “I mean, she’ll probably make it through.” The way he says that, it doesn’t sound like he believes it. “She’s strong. Y’know.” His eyes well with tears anyway and he hurriedly brushes them away. “Sorry. You’re a complete stranger and I’m just-”

“I asked, didn’t I?” Wary of crossing a boundary but also feeling his chest ache, Rantaro reaches out and touches the kid’s arm. “Is your mom seeing a doctor?”

“We can barely afford our apartment and healthcare isn’t universal.” The kid smiles bitterly. “So  _ no,  _ she’s not.” And that’s just really… Rantaro frowns. Sometimes he forgets, because he’s so focused on other things, how privileged he is, when there are other people, just like the kid in front of him, who are living lives way harder than his will ever be. It’s good for putting it into perspective, but…

Rantaro slides his hand back into his pocket, dodging the picture of his sister and closing his fingers around his wallet. It’s a bit awkward maneuvering but he manages to open his wallet inside his pocket and yank out all the cards. There’s a good amount of cash in there, because Rantaro likes to have a fair amount on hand- just in case he gets robbed, which happens a lot, and wants to avoid getting his ass kicked- but that’ll probably work in his favour. He tucks the wallet, which is thankfully thin and not bulky at all, into his palm before pulling his hand out of his pocket.

“Sorry, I should really go.” The kid apologises. “My friend is back at the apartment waiting for me and I don’t want her to get worried.

“Before you go,” Rantaro reaches out with his other hand, the one that’s not holding his wallet. “Can I ask for your name? It’s unlikely that we ever see each other again, but…”

The kid hesitates. “Jack.” He mumbles, and pushes his hair out of his face. “Uhm… and yours…?”

“Rantaro,” Rantaro returns, figuring that since this is America he’ll probably want his given name. Then, carefully, he extends his hand for a handshake, covering his wallet with his sleeve. Jack reaches out and accepts the handshake, and while their hands are connected, Rantaro pushes the wallet into the kid’s palm. Since Jack is wearing gloves, he doesn’t seem to notice. “I hope things get better for you.” Rantaro tells the kid, and smiles. Before Jack can figure anything out, he pulls his hand away and turns around, starting off in the other direction.

When Rantaro turns the corner, he catches a glimpse of the kid- holding the wallet in his hands and looking confused. A long moment passes and he looks up, presumably looking around for Rantaro, but-

He slips around the corner. He might as well go buy some gloves now, because he officially needs a new wallet.

**Author's Note:**

> aki means autumn in Japanese :D


End file.
